Steve Chitwood

12/13/2016

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Why DMPs are the future of marketing technology

Marketers have to lasso too much data from too many systems these days. Information is siloed across departments, and companies often have multiple technology platforms supporting different functions.

In the meantime, your prospects are in motion. They’re on mobile devices. Their preferences are evolving. Their attention spans are atomized.

To succeed—to snag prospects, then build long-term relationships with them—you need to rethink the relationship between advertising and marketing. That means you need to embrace data management platforms (DMPs).

The timing is right. As Forrester analyst Jennifer Adams writes in “Data Management Platforms Go Mainstream,” the market is expected to grow by 43% annually over the next five years. This raises several questions:

Why is adoption happening so fast?

Which vendor will become the market leader?

What’s the likely evolution of the technology?

DMP adoption picks up speed

As we wrote in a recent article, DMPs aren’t new. But with the trend toward personalization, particularly one-to-one marketing across multiple channels, their role is expanding quickly. Another reason for increased adoption: Marketers have begun to understand that the technology can be used for much more than more precise ad targeting.

By tapping into rich sets of customer behavioral data and segmenting capabilities, companies can deepen their understanding of the buyer journey and provide improved experiences at every touchpoint. As Adams writes in her Forrester piece:

“CMOs are focusing on improving their marketing and advertising ROI, and DMPs demonstrate tangible value by clearly organizing data into taxonomies, identifying intent to purchase, and yielding higher conversion rates.”

Put another way, the barrier between marketing and advertising is crashing down. As LiveIntent CEO Matt Keiser explains in AdExchanger,

“Ad tech, agencies, marketers and their clients—brands—want a combined solution for servicing their customers in a mobile-first era. The winner will be the cloud or agency that melds the advertising and marketing worlds.”

Heavy hitters contend for leadership

As we noted in a recent post, the Salesforce acquisition of DMP software Krux is a sign of the consolidation that will continue in 2017.

While the introduction of Einstein is exciting news for artificial intelligence applications, the Krux acquisition means advancements in the underlying data that powers intelligence. Through this deal, Salesforce brings in-house the data it needs to conduct large-scale audience segmentation and targeting.

Named by Forrester as a leader in the DMP space, Krux was a natural acquisition target for Salesforce. It gives that company the ability to churn large amounts of structured and unstructured data to target consumers better and create more valuable customer experiences.

Other industry giants are also strengthening their big data management capabilities, including:

“With the right DMP in place,” writes Oracle strategist Steve Olenski on the Convince & Convert blog, “B2B marketers don’t need to suffer any longer.” Why? Because a DMP has the inherent ability to:

Ingest both structured and unstructured data

Match identities across devices and interactions

Enrich existing datasets with behavioral attributes

This technology gives marketers a powerful set of tools for segmenting and targeting audiences, and reaching individuals within those segments with personalized messages. As Forrester Research indicates, data management platforms have hit the tipping point. It’s time to embrace them.